• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.119-129
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• 2022

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate sales managers' strategic focus on customer acquisition, specifically its effect on salespeople's performance. In addition, this study aimed to determine how salespeople's interpersonal skills, salesmanship skills, and technical knowledge affect the relationship between customer-acquisition management and salespeople's performance. Research design, data, and methodology: This study conducted a survey of 310 salespeople working at pharmaceutical companies. A structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the main effects and interaction effects using AMOS. Results: The results indicated that both managers' customer-acquisition orientation and salespeople's salesmanship skills and technical knowledge positively affected the latter's performance. Further, it was found that the higher the technical knowledge of the salesperson, the greater the effect of the customer-acquisition orientation on sales performance. Conclusions: Sales managers should enable salespeople to quickly acquire technical knowledge with respect to the market, products, competitors, and company policy so that they can bring greater synergy to the customer-acquisition orientation.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.39-49
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• 2019

Purpose - Customer loyalty and citizenship behavior are key success factors of franchise system. They make the management of franchisee more effective and efficient. Prior studies, however, mainly dealt with only acquisition utility of customer, such as perceived product/service quality and brand reputation to explain customer loyalty and citizenship behavior, which explains only on one side. We tried to investigate the effect of exchange utility of customer, such as relationship strength and psychological obligation together with the acquisition utility. In addition, we tried to investigate the relationship between customer loyalty and citizenship behavior in franchise context. Research design, data, and methodology - This study used data collected from the dining franchisee managers of 342 franchisors in South Korea. The franchisors consist of more than ten franchisees, the majority of which participated directly in the transaction with franchisor and have worked for more than six months. To test the hypotheses, the study used structural equation model analysis. Results - H1-1, 1-2, 1-3 predicted that acquisition utility would increase customer loyalty to franchisee. In support of H1-1, 1-2, 1-3, the results indicated that acquisition utilities such as perceived product value, perceived service value, and franchise brand reputation had positive effects on customer loyalty. H2-1, 2-2 predicted that exchange utility would increase customer loyalty to franchisee. In support of H2-2, the result indicated that psychological obligation had positive effects on customer loyalty like other acquisition utilities. However, H2-1 was not supported. Relationship strength had no significant effect on customer loyalty. H3 predicted that customer loyalty would increase customer citizenship behavior. In support of H3, the results indicated that customer loyalty had positive effect on customer citizenship behavior. Overall, the evidences generally supported the hypotheses. Conclusion - The results of the study show that not only acquisition utility but also exchange utility increases customer loyalty to franchisee and also show that customer loyalty increases customer citizenship behavior. Interestingly, however, relationship strength has no significant effect on customer loyalty. These results have two implications. The one is that increasing exchange utility can improve customer loyalty as acquisition utility can. The other one is that both of customer utilities can improve customer citizenship via customer loyalty.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.21-47
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• 2019

This study empirically examines the synergy effect of a corporate-level loyalty program on customer equity (CE) known as the lifetime value of current and future customers (Blattberg et al. 2009). A corporate-level loyalty program refers to a company-wide integration loyalty program at the corporate-level in which subsidiaries (multi-divisions) participate as program members. It does not merely examine whether there is an integration effect of a corporate-level loyalty program from the CE perspective, but it provides practical implications for a firm's strategic focus by identifying which value creation channels (i.e., acquisition, retention, and cross-selling), brand characteristics (i.e., size of the customer base before integration, diversity of products, and sales channel type), and consumer characteristics (i.e., customer relationship stage, transaction amount before integration, transaction period, and number of purchased brands) are affected the most by the synergy effect.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.123-138
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• 2016

This study investigates intents of acquisitions in information technology industries. Mergers and acquisitions are a strategic decision at corporate-level and have been an important tool for a firm to grow. Plenty of firms in information technology industries have acquired startups to increase production efficiency, expand customer base, or improve quality over the last decades. For example, Google has made about 200 acquisitions since 2001, Cisco has acquired about 210 firms since 1993, Oracle has made about 125 acquisitions since 1994, and Microsoft has acquired about 200 firms since 1987. Although there have been many existing papers that theoretically study intents or motivations of acquisitions, there are limited papers that empirically investigate them mainly because it is challenging to measure and quantify intents of M&As. This study examines the intent of acquisitions by measuring specific intents for M&A transactions. Using our measures of acquisition intents, we compare the intents by four acquisition types: (1) the acquisition where a hardware firm acquires a hardware firm, (2) the acquisition where a hardware firm acquires a software/IT service firm, (3) the acquisition where a software/IT service firm acquires a hardware firm, and (4) the acquisition where a software /IT service firm acquires a software/IT service firm. We presume that there are difference in reasons why a hardware firm acquires another hardware firm, why a hardware firm acquires a software firm, why a software/IT service firm acquires a hardware firm, and why a software/IT service firm acquires another software/IT service firm. Using data of the M&As in US IT industries, we identified major intents of the M&As. The acquisition intents are identified based on the press release of M&A announcements and measured with four categories. First, an acquirer may have intents of cost saving in operations by sharing common resources between the acquirer and the target. The cost saving can accrue from economies of scope and scale. Second, an acquirer may have intents of product enhancement/development. Knowledge and skills transferred from the target may enable the acquirer to enhance the product quality or to expand product lines. Third, an acquirer may have intents of gain additional customer base to expand the market, to penetrate the market, or to enter a foreign market. Fourth, a firm may acquire a target with intents of expanding customer channels. By complementing existing channel to the customer, the firm can increase its revenue. Our results show that acquirers have had intents of cost saving more in acquisitions between hardware companies than in acquisitions between software companies. Hardware firms are more likely to acquire with intents of product enhancement or development than software firms. Overall, the intent of product enhancement/development is the most frequent intent in all of the four acquisition types, and the intent of customer base expansion is the second. We also analyze our data with the classification of production-side intents and customer-side intents, which is based on activities of the value chain of a firm. Intents of cost saving operations and those of product enhancement/development can be viewed as production-side intents and intents of customer base expansion and those of expanding customer channels can be viewed as customer-side intents. Our analysis shows that the ratio between the number of customer-side intents and that of production-side intents is higher in acquisitions where a software firm is an acquirer than in the acquisitions where a hardware firm is an acquirer. This study can contribute to IS literature. First, this study provides insights in understanding M&As in IT industries by answering for question of why an IT firm intends to another IT firm. Second, this study also provides distribution of acquisition intents for acquisition types.

• CRM연구
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.43-68
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• 2010

One of the recent research trends that universities are increasingly adopting the concept of 'customer' and the customer-oriented strategy has urged us to research enterprise-wide CRM strategy adaptable to university administration. As the first step of CRM strategy for university management, we try to validate the difference of CRM strategic factors among university types. Drawing upon both CRM process and customer equity drivers, which have been recognized as core frameworks for CRM strategy, we developed those survey instruments adoptable into university industry, and validated statistically-significant difference among 12 types of university group constructed by the levels of university evaluation and the location of the universities. We collected 261 responses from 177 universities from all over the country and analyzed the data to see the levels of CRM processes consisting of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion, and customer equity drivers consisting of value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity by using multivariate ANOVA(MANOVA). The result confirms the explicit differences of the levels of CRM processes and customer equity drivers between the groups by university evaluation levels(high/middle/low). However, the analysis failed to show the significant differences of those between the group by university locations(the capital/the suburbs/the six megalopolises/other countries). More specifically, the level of activities for customer acquisition and retention of the universities in the higher-graded group are significantly different from those in the lower-graded group from the perspective of CRM process. In terms of customer equity drivers, the levels of both brand equity and relationship equity of the higher-graded group are significantly higher than those of both middle and lower-graded group. In addition, we found that the value equity between the higher and lower-graded groups, and the brand equity between the middle and lower-graded groups are different each other. This study provides an important meaning in that we tried to consider CRM strategy which has been mainly addressed in profit-making industries in terms of non-profit organization context. Our endeavors to develop and validate empirical measurements adoptable to university context could be an academic contribution. In terms of practical meaning, the processes and results of this study might be a guideline to many universities to build their own CRM strategies. According to the research results, those insights could be expressed in several messages. First, we propose to universities that they should plan their own differentiated CRM strategies according to their positions in terms of university evaluation. For example, although it is acceptable that a university in lower-level group might follow the CRM process strategy of the middle-level group universities, it is not a good idea to imitate the customer acquisition and retention activities of the higher-level group universities. Moreover, since this study reported that the level of universities' brand equity is just correlated with the level of university evaluation, it might be pointless for the middle or lower-leveled universities if they just copy their brand equity strategies from those of higher-leveled ones even though such activities are seemingly attractive. Meanwhile, the difference of CRM strategy by university position might provide universities with the direction where they should go for their CRM strategies. For instance, our study implies that the lower-positioned universities should improve all of the customer equity drivers with concerted efforts because their value, brand, and relationship equities are inferior compared with the higher and middle-positioned universities' ones. This also means that they should focus on customer acquisition and expansion initiatives rather than those for customer retention because all of the customer equity drivers could be influenced by the two kinds of CRM processes (KIm and Lee, 2010). Surely specific and detailed action plans for enhancing customer equity drivers should be developed after grasping their customer migration patterns illustrated by the rates of acquisition, retention, upgrade, downgrade, and defection for each customer segment.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.105-124
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• 2007

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) becomes a crucial paradigm as the environment of the market changes. About the CRM actively maintaining and managing customers that have been already acquired, the research has been done as a plan to lure loyal customers who bring lucrative profits in the long term for the company in order to increase the value to the customers. However, in practice, the focus is on putting spurs to attracting new customers in a short term rather than retaining existing customers who give profitable revenues. If the company puts high emphasis on drawing the new customers, in a CRM's point of view in relation to the value of the customers, it can incur a loss in the long run. The reason is that if the firm conducts discriminative sales promotion, the existing clients with high loyalty will feel relatively treated inappropriately and they will have negative feelings such as being betrayed from the company they prefer. This occurrence of negative emotion can in-crease the possibility of highly profitable clients' secession. In consequence, this paper focusing on the process of the client segmentation at the mobile telecommunication services shows that the sales promotion strategy for the new customer attraction can lead to negative effect on the loyalty of the existing customers.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.123-139
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• 2005

Until now, There are many studies of reward program effect about retaining current customers. But main goal of this study is acquiring new customer in competitive environment. We also reveal strategic framework for maximizing acquisition of new customer. For increasing customer loyalty of non-use brand, we'd better to give Out My Own reward non-user immediately and for increasing customer loyalty of use brand we'd better to give In My own Brand user accumulatively. Implication of the results for markets and future research are discussed

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.187-206
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• 2010

Evolutionary acquisition is an alternative to the grand design acquisition approaches. It has activities to make it possible to develop quickly and respond flexibly to changing customer needs and technological opportunities. The Ministry of Defense adopted an evolutionary strategy to acquire defense information systems. but it does not work well always. We look at problems from aspects of acquisition system and project management. We benchmark successful cases for evolutionary acquisition strategy in the DoD, the pubic and the private sector. We suggest an evolutionary strategy for defense information systems. The evolutionary strategy in this study includes an evolutionary acquisition framework, an evolutionary acquisition process, and an evolutionary acquisition guideline for defense information systems. The evolutionary strategy can help to implement evolutionary acquisition process for defense information system, and the process can increase the success rate of projects.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.218-233
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• 2008

This study reveals how corporate CRM activities can influence organizational performance by integrating CRM process with customer equity drivers, which have been regarded as independent research areas. The results show that the customer equity drivers including value, brand, and relationship equity mediate between CRM processes and organizational performance. In more detail, customer acquisition, retention, and expansion have positive relationships with brand, relationship, and value equity, respectively. Moreover, even though all customer equity drivers influence organizational performance positively, our analysis suggests that relationship equity has the strongest effect on it.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2010

This article addresses how an organization's customer relationship management (CRM) process affects customer equity drivers and, in turn, organizational performance. By raising a three-staged model including the CRM processes, customer equity drivers, and organizational performance, the authors assert that the customer equity drivers mediate between the CRM processes and organizational performance. The empirical analysis is based on a composite survey structure that gathers data from different types of informants according to the variables. Findings indicate that the expansion process has positive relationship with all the customer equity drivers. However, the acquisition process significantly influences both perceived value equity and brand equity, and the retention process significantly influences relationship equity only. In addition, the study shows that all the customer equity drivers influence the organizational performance given the existing customers. The relationship equity among the customer equity drivers has the strongest effect on the performance.